Is Google AdWords Right for Your Website?

Website owners often face a dilemma when trying to decide how to promote their sites best online. An attractive option is Google AdWords, a pay-per-click advertising network that allows advertisers to bid on target keywords in their ads. The more popular a keyword, the more expensive it will be to bid on. These ads are then placed on search engine landing pages, as well as websites, blogs and YouTube channels. But while Google AdWords can seem like an easy way to drive traffic to sites, the costs of paying for each click can be expensive. Additionally, there is no guarantee that visitors who click on an ad will turn into customers. Therefore, site owners need to think about whether PPC advertising is right for them, carefully.

Getting started with Google AdWords

To use this method of advertising, you must first create a Google AdWords account. You then need to determine a spending budget to fund your campaign. After that, you can create small ads with your target keywords. If these keywords rank high in search queries, you will have to pay more for them. Ultimately, you pay for each visitor that clicks on your ads, until your monthly budget runs out. This can be a rather costly way to drive traffic to your website, especially if you are using competitive phrases. Expensive PPC campaigns can eat up a small marketing budget. Therefore, site owners must research how cost effective it is to pay for traffic.

Challenges – Google Adwords – Is all traffic quality traffic?

No, and this is another challenge of PPC advertising. Content owners that feature your ads on their pages want to send you as many visitors as they can because they will earn more revenue. However, the visitors sent to your site may not even be interested in your content. Furthermore, if most of these visitors are uninterested in your content, it is less likely that they will become customers. The primary purpose of online ads is to build your brand so you can attract more customers. If traffic to your site is not converting, then all the money you are spending on visitors is a waste. This makes it important to think about better ways to attract quality traffic.

Most search engine queries are from users looking for information, and a lot of them will ignore these Google ads. However, if you invest in achieving a higher organic search ranking, many of these visitors might visit your site, after which, they could be interested in becoming customers. Attracting quality traffic to your site organically, instead of through paid ads, is usually a better way to attract visitors.

So, is Google AdWords worth it?

Paying for Google AdWords can take away from other promotional efforts that could probably yield more success. For example, if your target audience is young people, social media marketing might be a better investment. If your site doesn’t meet Google’s best practices, hiring a professional to fix the issues might be a better use of money. Also, paying to develop quality content, especially for blogs, can boost your site’s organic search rankings. Investing in other areas of SEO could be more beneficial as well.

In short, before you start a Google AdWords campaign, consider your advertising goals. Then think of the best ways to achieve these aims. That way you can determine the most fruitful way to spend your marketing budget to promote your site.

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This article first appeared on the Scatter Blog. Republished with permission.

Brian Pereira is an Indian journalist based in Mumbai. He has 25 years of technology journalism experience, and he's well known in the Indian IT industry. He is the former Editor of CHIP and InformationWeek magazines in India and has written technology articles for India's leading newspapers groups such as The Times of India and Indian Express Newspapers. Brian also writes on Aviation, startups and covers topics directed at small and medium businesses.
He also has event experience and once put together the conference program for CeBIT and INTEROP events in India.
Email: brian@digitalcreed.in
Twitter: @brian9p
Linkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/pereirabrian